14 December, 2009

Back in the day, several manufacturers made handlebar mounted racks/decaleurs for traditional front bags. These "rackaleurs" were not intended to replace a front rack on a touring or rando bike, but rather to allow a simple way to mount your bag on a bike that lacked a front rack, on your racing bike for example. In fact I used one on my racing bike for many years and many thousands of miles. It allowed me to carry my ancient Leica camera and some extra cloths on training rides.

Rackaleurs hold the bag higher than is ideal, but if you carry a light load they work quite well. On bumpy roads, however, I recommend using an old toe clip strap or loop of bungy cord to connect the bag to the head tube (as in the photo) to prevent the bag from bouncing around when going over large bumps.

We bought a NOS case of these a couple of years ago ago and they quickly sold out, so we decided to make reproductions. The new rackaleurs just arrived and are now available in the Velo Orange store and through VO dealers.

Note that Rackaleurs fit on traditional quill stems, those shaped like the Nitto Technomic. They don't work with most threadless stems because threadless stems are usually too wide. They do fit on aero-style quill stems, but may need to be bent down a little in order to sit level.

The problem with making them for threadless stems is that the width and depth of the various brands varies greatly. That makes it impossible to design one to fit them all. Quill stems all have about the same dimensions.

I normally find your pricing quite fair, but $49? The two leg stand is about the same amount of metal with several welds and it's $19.50. I know that's an off the shelf product from a distributor and this is something you had to pay for the tooling and minimum on, but still, I can't see paying that much for this.

The cost reflects that the decaleur required new and fairly involved tooling. It also requires very good quality control to assure that all the bends are exactly right. Plus it's made from polished stainless steel.

The Two Legged Stand is not a VO product, but a commodity item made from regular chrome plated steel for which tooling is much simpler and was paid for years ago. The quality is not even close to that of the rackaleur.

I also had one of these from the Touring Cyclist Shop in Boulder, bought in 1976, with one of their own handlebar bags. I still have the bag, as well as a set of their rear panniers with their rear rack. They are as good as nearly anything available today and better than most. However, heel clearances are tight on most current bikes because frame proportions tend to be shorter than they were back then.

My ex-wife had a Kirkland touring handlebar bag with a slightly similiar support. I'm reminded of that bag. Of course, while not as functional as your rackaleur, it served the purpose and was included in the total cost. While I admire your move to make rare,uncommon products available, I feel the cost of $49 is somewhat high.

I am hoping to get a single handlebar bag to fit several different bikes, so the Rackaleur sounds great, and $50 is much cheaper than 3 racks!

However, only one of the bikes has a stem like you show in the picture. One of them has a Nitto DirtDrop, and the other is the original stem and handlebar on a 1967 Raleigh Superbe. Would the Rackaleur fit these other two bikes?